Feds Find Someone Weak and Poor Enough to Nail for Housing Meltdown

[Newsjock]

http://gawker.com/feds-find-someone-weak-and-poor-enough-to-nail-for-hous-512961299

The U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Wisconsin announced a major conviction today in the ongoing criminal prosecution of the people who brought the economy to its knees four years ago via a toxic campaign of mortgage fraud. Meet James Wazlawik of Prescott, Wisc.

Wazlawik is 48 years old. He is married with three sons, one of whom was born with Down Syndrome and required heart surgery not long after he was born. Today he was sentenced to one day in jail and three years supervised release after pleading guilty to "making a false statement to a bank in connection with a home equity loan." His crime: When he applied for a $150,000 home equity loan from Citibank in 2005, he put his signature to an "income verification form" claiming that his monthly income was $8,500. In fact, it was substantially less than that.

... To date, no one in the executive ranks of Citibank—or any of the other Wall Street institutions that solicited and profited from loans like the one Citibank issued to Wazlawik—have been criminally targeted by the Department of Justice.

But Wazlawik now has a felony conviction on his record, will spend a humiliating day in jail, and will spend the next three years at risk of going to prison if he violates the terms of his release. You can sleep easy tonight, America, knowing that your Department of Justice is diligently going after those criminals who would do us harm.

[n2doc]

1. I wish someone would staple this article to the white house front door. n/t

[FiveGoodMen]

22. Obama doesn't care

If he did, he'd try to fix this sort of thing.

Yes, Congress might get in his way, but we'd still see him trying.

[pscot]

2. Eric holder: Crime Fighter

[Half-Century Man]

3. Yay...hoorah....

....Our criminal justice system at work...............yipee

[benld74]

4. Pathetic, simple pathetic

when own OWN government doesn't have the cajones to STAND against the banksters!

[sulphurdunn]

25. It's not that government

is afraid of them. The government is them.

[ReRe]

5. "We're all criminals now."

At least the 98-99% are. Remember, there are two sets of laws in this country. Woe to those who were born on the wrong side of the tracks.

[Robb]

6. Jesus FUCKING Christ.

[Nye Bevan]

7. I'm not sure that this guy was "nailed for the housing meltdown".

It seems that he got into trouble for lying through his teeth on a loan application.

[thefool_wa]

9. Don't be naive...

These lenders are predatory and try to coax you into doing stuff like this knowing they won't be held responsible, you will. Had that kind of experience myself, but I was smart enough to say "yeah, fuck you, I'm not committing fraud." and turned down the loan. I had to wait another 2 years to buy a house, but it was better than wondering every day for the rest of my life if something like this was going to happen to me.

on edit: spelling correction.

[trof]

23. Yeah. Does the phrase "Everybody does it. Don't worry about it." sound familiar?

[Hassin Bin Sober]

14. I PERSONALLY sat in a sales meeting with a Citimortgage VP...

.... TELLING us how to falsify "no income verification" loans.

Right in front of my very own eyes.

The advice was to "go on salary.com to see what is believable"

No fucking way that guy falsified the app without at least a little nudge or "we won't verify so write whatever needs to be written" advice. Most likely the loan officer did the math for the applicant.

[DCKit]

17. +1 nt

[jtuck004]

24. So here's a guy buying a home and without any training or knowledge knew EXACTLY

what to put on a loan application so it would get past the underwriters, without any help from the lender who profited whether he could pay off the loan or not.

We live in an age of fucking miracles.

[sulphurdunn]

26. Sure he did.

Why him? The difference is that loan originators (the big fish) caught in the feds net pay a fine, have no criminal record as a result and are free to feed on the little fish again. Please don't imply that justice has been done here until the big fish get fried too.

[reformist2]

8. Meanwhile, where oh where is Angelo Mozilo of Countrywide?

[DCKit]

18. He's out. Paid 10% in fines and probably can't be prosecuted again. nt

[Sadie5]

10. He and all of his partners

in crime from countrywide are running penny mac. Penny Mac gives loans but mostly services government loans.

[blkmusclmachine]

11. .

.

[Marie Marie]

12. Well, Somebody had to be held accountable.

Finally, we nailed the man behind our housing bubble collapse. Whew. WTF!! This is just wrong wrong wrong.

[RVN VET]

13. Please, please folks, move along, move along . . .

. . .there's no class warfare to see here.


I don't even expect fairness anymore, let alone justice. The 1%, pushed by the 0.1%, wreck the economy. Their victims do what they can to survive, and are treated like criminals.

[lpbk2713]

15. ... and the Banksters are shocked and appalled.

[Enthusiast]

16. Justice, it's what this nation is all about!

I keed.

[ProSense]

19. That doesn't

"Feds Find Someone Weak and Poor Enough to Nail for Housing Meltdown"

...appear to be accurate. There are other prosecutions for mortgage fraud.

http://www.stopfraud.gov/news-index.html

[Scuba]

20. Kick

[indepat]

21. A primer in how the equal justice under the law doctrine is applied in the

real world. Yes, inflating income on a loan application is in violation of Federal law: one wonders what percentage of the time violation(s) of Federal law have been prosecuted in the aftermath of the financial meltdown? Just how egregious is the failure to administer equal justice under the law?